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Description

View of Nusretiye Mosque showing the Bosphorus in the foreground with a man boarding a ship from a rowboat.
Nusretiye Mosque stands in Tophane, a neighborhood on the European side of Istanbul, where it was completed in 1826. The name Nusretiye means Victory and refers to Sultan Mahmut II’s crushing of the rebellion of the Janissaries, which led to the disbanding of the Janissary corps. The author describes the building as follows:

This beautiful but small imperial mosque of the reigning sultan, is situated not on a conspicuous eminence like those of his predecessors, but in the low alluvial ground on the shores of the Bosphorus, and on the water’s edge; but the beauty and finish of the edifice compensate for the defects of its site. All the skill of Oriental ornament is expended upon it. Rich lattice-work and taper spires of minarets highly gilded, glitter in the sun with a brilliancy and recency, as if they had been left just finished by the hands of the artisans; while painting and sculpture, in rich arabesque, give a peculiar elegance to the edifice.